John Creasey - Gideon’s Sport

“Suppose I do,” conceded Gideon gruffly. He watched Penny put two eggs, several slices of bacon and some fried bread on her plate, sit down, hitch her chair forward, and tuck in with gusto. He wondered idly whether all young women-pianists were such hearty eaters. She played with one of the B.B.C. orchestras, which was often on the air; he could never quite believe it, even now.

“Malcolm’s gone to play tennis before school — there’s a tournament on,” she offered. “I can’t see why anyone is so crazy about knocking a soft ball about with a bat!”

“Racquet,” corrected Gideon, absently.

“Bat is good enough to me! Oh, well, better hit a little ball about than nothing, I suppose. Daddy, darling, you couldn’t give-I mean lend-me ten bob, could you?”

Gideon studied her open face and candid blue eyes, and felt a great warmth of affection for his youngest daughter,

“Better take a pound while you’re about it,” he said mildly, “You’ll find one on your mother’s dressing-table.”

“Bless you!” she cried. “And now I must fly.”

“Where are you going to fly to?” he enquired, mildly.

“Oh, Daddy, I told you, last night! The whole orchestra is going down to Brighton, we have to play, this evening. Oh, you’re impossible!” She went racing out of the room, and flung over her shoulder: “Malcolm said tell Mummy he’ll go straight on to school.”

Gideon nodded as he tightened the sash of his dressing-gown, and contemplated the stove. Cook, or eat cold?

He decided on bacon and eggs, pondering over Penelope’s remarks about Kate. She was right, of course, Kate had taken the hot weather very badly: he simply hadn’t thought much about it. Way she all right? It wasn’t the change of life; that was long past. Over-tired? One wouldn’t think so, now that all but Malcolm were off her hands. And only a few weeks ago she had been saying she must find something to do, time was too heavy on her hands. He sat down to three eggs, as many rashers, and liberally-buttered toast, had some instant coffee, then returned upstairs.

Penelope, overnight case in hand, was tip-toeing out of the main bedroom. She put her fingers to her lips but did not close the door.

“Ssshh! Still asleep.”

“I shan’t wake her,” Gideon whispered.

“Goodbye, Daddy.” The Soft, peach-bloom cheek came forward for a kiss. “You’re a dear, really,” she informed him, whispering as she passed: “Especially for a man!”

Gideon began to chuckle, stopped himself, went into the bedroom and crossed to the window. As he expected, an M.G. was outside with her latest boy-friend at the wheel. He was a nice-looking, fair-haired youth, who jumped out and took her case. There was a hurried consultation, and the boy glanced up at the window. Then, resignedly, he went to the driving side of the car, and began to push, while Penelope went behind the car and added her own weight. She was not going to allow the noisy engine of a sports car to wake her mother.

Penelope wasn’t prone to taking things too seriously, so she must really be concerned. Gideon turned and looked down at his wife; frowning, beginning to worry.

And then the telephone rang.

He saw Kate start as he snatched the receiver from the bedside table. He could have bellowed at the caller, but instead lie watched Kate as he steeled himself to say: “Commander Gideon.”

“George.” Only one man had a voice like that and only one man could breathe such urgency into one word. Gideon’s anger faded; he was suddenly very intent on Lemaitre.

“Yes, Lem?”

“George — that runner for Jackie Spratt’s — you remember?”

Of course he remembered. “Yes?”

“They’ve just taken his body out of the river,” Lemaitre told him. “He didn’t turn up at the pub, last night. I feel awful, George. I shouldn’t have arranged to meet him there. Too bloody cocky, that’s my trouble. Never learn! I—”

“How was he killed?” Gideon interrupted.

For the first time he was aware of Kate looking at him; from half-closed eyes it was true, but obviously awake and aware of what was being said. He raised a hand to her as he listened to Lemaitre, who was answering with a curious kind of incoherence.

“Strangled — manual strangulation. And there’s a funny thing, George. He had a rash on his neck-heat, the doc thinks — and had smeared some ointment over it. Oily stuff. We might get a couple of thumb-prints. Strangled by a man in front of him, thumb marks — bloody great bruises, on either side of the windpipe. Thrown in the river off Surrey Docks, caught in the wash of a pleasure boat-they’ve been running all night, making a fortune-and he was pushed up to some barges tied up for painting, wedged between two of them. If it hadn’t been for that, he might not have been found for a week. Had to have some luck.”

“Who did?” asked Gideon, bleakly. Then: “Where’s the body?”

“In the morgue, here.”

“Who’s the doctor?”

“Webb. But George, we need a pathologist, I’m sure of that, and —”

“Send for the best one who can get over at once,” ordered Gideon. “Any other clues of any kind?”

“Not a bloody thing,” answered Lemaitre. “George, I feel terrible!”

“You’ll feel a damned sight worse if you let any grass grow under your feet,” growled Gideon. “Report again at ten.”

“Okay, on the dot!” Lemaitre promised, and put down his receiver with anxious alacrity. He had an hour and a half in which to get some kind of report for Gideon and he would go almost mad trying to get at least one piece of permissible evidence. Gideon could imagine him as he put the receiver down and moved towards Kate, who had pushed the sheet further away from her chin. Her marble-white shoulders seemed to glow in the morning light. He bent over and kissed her forehead.

“Hallo, love! Awake, then?”

“George! Is it very late?”

“No-and no need for you to get up, either. I’ve had breakfast and that bright pair of children of ours have gone.” He moved away, still looking at her, seeing faint shadows at her eyes which were quite new to him. He took his tie off the dressing-table mirror, dressed, yanked at a too-tight collar and rummaged in a drawer for one with a larger neckband. All this time Kate lay, half-covered, watching and smiling. But there was a significant difference; normally, she would have been out of bed, pushing him away, putting her hand on the larger shirt in a trice. He put the fresh shirt on and knotted the tie. “That’s better. Stay there while I get you a cup of tea.”

“No, George, I —”

“Stay there!” he ordered.

And she stayed.

He made tea and toast and took a laden tray up to her, told her gruffly to take it easy, the heat was no joke, and then left, a little after nine o’clock. He had to walk a few hundred yards to the garage where he kept his car, round a corner. He could be fetched and carried by one of his men, of course, but he preferred to drive himself unless it were urgent or very official business. The car started at the first touch. There was no need to drive past his house, nevertheless he did, glancing up at the window. There was no sign of Kate.

Of course there wasn’t; there never was in the morning.

He left one of the constables on duty to park his car in the Yard itself, nodded and occasionally grunted in response to greetings of “Good morning, sir!”, “Good morning, Commander!”, “Good morning, Mr. Gideon!”, until at last he turned into his own office.

It was ten minutes past nine.

An unexpected breeze cooled his face as he opened the door, and papers, although anchored to the desk by weights and books, fluttered noisily. He slipped quickly inside, puzzled, until he saw the cause of it — a fan, whirring at speed, perched on top of a filing-cabinet. Wonder who the blazes did that? he thought. His jacket was already half-way off as he went over and looked at the whirling blades inside the little iron cage, and the breeze was very welcome on his face. Then he went to his desk and sat down, looking at the pile of folders which had been placed on it. One was Outdoor Events, June. The others, each clearly marked on a tab, were all precisely described. One startled him: Superintendent Lemaitre: River Death Inquiry.

Lem certainly hadn’t been long and as certainly hadn’t been here, so this must have been put here by Gideon’s own deputy — Deputy Commander Alec Hobbs. So, of course had the others; all hang-over cases on which Yard men were working, some in London, some with Regional and County Borough police forces co-operating with the Metropolitan area. Apart from Lemaitre’s case, there appeared to be no new ones in, which meant that none of the overnight crimes had persuaded Hobbs that it merited Gideon’s personal attention. Only occasionally was Hobbs wrong.

He glanced through seven reports. Two bank robberies, a case of arson, a fraud case, an assault charge involving a woman against a woman, but not particularly serious. He looked through the rest saw nothing new in any of them, pushed the last one aside and dialled the number of the office next to his own. Hobbs was within a few feet, but Gideon didn’t want to see him yet; just wanted a little clarification.

Hobbs answered promptly.

“Good morning, sir.”

“What kind of a morning?” asked Gideon.

“Nothing of particular importance,” Hobbs answered, in his controlled and completely assured way. He was the other end of the scale from Lemaitre; Repton and Cambridge, very much the English gentleman. More a Scott-Marie type than a Gideon although they had come to know, like, and admire each other. “No one has specifically asked to see you and practically everything else is routine  —  except, of course, Lemaitre’s problem.”

“I’ve no appointments,” Gideon told him. “Have Lem over here by half-past eleven, say. He’s to call at ten.”

“I’ll do that.”

“And come in as soon as you’re through briefing,” said Gideon, and rang off.

Hobbs, although he had been deputy for a comparatively short time, had made a great difference to Gideon. It was a change which had come gradually and ostensibly at his, Gideon’s, instruction, but occasionally he wondered how much Hobbs steered him. At one time, Gideon himself would have interviewed every senior officer in charge of an investigation, not content to allow Lemaitre to handle major cases. Now, Hobbs did much of the briefing, and Gideon had come to rely on his judgment completely. This was largely because if Hobbs had any doubt at all as to the right course of action, he invariably consulted Gideon before making a move.

Gideon studied the few details there were, in Lemaitre’s report.

The dead man’s name was Charles Blake — good lord, little Charlie Blake! Gideon had known him on and off for twenty years; a perky little man who lived more on the fringe of crime than on crime itself. He would have thought him harmless enough. He was less an informer than a man who simply could not help talking to someone if he had any inside information, and he could be called a ‘friend’ of Lemaitre. There was nothing here that Lemaitre hadn’t told him. He put the report aside and glanced through Outdoor Events  —  June, then telephoned the Superintendent of AB Division, a Charles Henry, fairly young and fairly new to the command of one of London’s most important divisions, which included the whole of Hampstead as well as St. John’s Wood.

“Good morning, Commander.”

“Morning, Chas,” Gideon greeted him. “I heard a rumour last night that there might be a major demonstration at Lords for the second Test. You heard anything?”

There was a momentary silence, as if they had been cut off.

.”You there?” Gideon asked, sharply.

“Yes,” Henry said, in a curiously flat voice. “Sorry, sir — I was a bit taken aback. I didn’t expect you to be in the picture already.”

“If there’s a picture, why haven’t you shown it to me?” demanded Gideon.

“I’d planned to call later today,” Henry answered defensively. “There is a plan to raid Lords. I haven’t all the details yet, but I’ve a report due this afternoon. I-er—” Henry broke off again. Obviously Gideon’s request had utterly disconcerted him. Gideon, very pleased that the Force had not been taken unawares, gave him time to recover, and soon Henry spoke with much more confidence: “I’ve had one of our young women on the look-out, sir. She was seconded from NE, so that she wouldn’t be recognised here, and she’s joined a group of hot-heads. Pretty girl, looks years younger than her age. I always felt there might be serious trouble over this second Test.”

“Go on,” urged Gideon.

“There’s a lot of hot air,” said Henry. “And this girl’s given us a few tips on which we’ve taken no action-she wanted to make sure no one suspected her. And she’s now on what they call the Action Committee.”

“Ah!” said Gideon, with real satisfaction tinged only vaguely with anxiety.

“Last night, apparently, they talked of this raid on Lords. She put in a report at four o’clock this morning, and isn’t due in again until two.”

“Bright girl,” Gideon approved. “No danger, is there?”

“Danger of what, sir?”

“For her?”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” said Henry, perhaps a little too briskly.

“Call me when she’s reported,” ordered Gideon, and rang off.

That last ‘Oh, I don’t think so’, was one he didn’t much like. Either Henry was being too casual, or else he did think the girl could be in danger but didn’t want to say so. It was a big mistake to take too much on oneself, and Henry might be tempted to. Gideon made a mental note that it might be a good thing to go and see both the Superintendent and the girl, that afternoon. It would put Henry on his toes and yet shouldn’t alarm the girl. The more he thought, the more Gideon wondered at the startled silence which had followed his first enquiry — could Henry have been planning some kind of coup, to spring on Gideon with an ‘aren’t I the clever one’ attitude? He pushed the thought to the back of his mind.

Soon, the buzzer from the direct line to Hobbs sounded.

“Yes?”

“I’m ready, sir.”

“Come in,” Gideon said.

Almost at once, the door opened.

Alec Hobbs was a compact man; well dressed but without ostentation, well groomed, good-looking in a way which grew on one rather than made an impact. He was short for a policeman: barely five feet eight, the regulation minimum height, but Gideon no longer noticed this. He had very clear, very direct grey eyes, made brighter by his rather dark complexion and his black hair, which was thick and wiry. This morning he wore a suit of lighter colour and lighter weight than usual. About his eyes and mouth there were lines etched during the years when his wife had been an incurable invalid; lines which seemed to have become set since she had died. He did not smile often, but he was more relaxed these days.

“Good morning, Alec.”

For the first time today, Hobbs dropped formality.

“Good morning, George.” He hovered until Gideon made a slight gesture towards a chair, sat down and put some files on the desk in front of him. “Lemaitre will be here. He sounds badly shaken.”